IF the Bible is a collection of hearsay, the core basis of Jehovah's Witnesses is opinion
.
1. The Faithful and Discreet Slave is consequently granting itself power based on human opinion (self-deception).
2. The reason constant doctrinal changes occur and prophetic dates fail is human opinion is fallible no matter how sincerely believed.
3. Only JW's old enough to have lived through dramatic failures and dogma changes fully appreciate the plausibility of this statement.
In view of the above, debate with JW's is two-mindsets clashing in two separate magisteria or jurisdictions.
This being:
A. Ex-JW who has seen the human error and investigated evidence which debunked claims of divine authority. A so-called "Apostate" is NOT really a renegade against God.
B. The convinced (i.e.faithful and loyal) JW imagines himself to be representing an honest organization.
For person A, person B is deluded although honest. For person B, person A is Evil and fighting against a truly necessary work.
How then can any agreement be possible since their separate realities clash?
In my opinion, the core issue is AUTHORITY and consequently AUTHORIZATION.
1. The Bible, if really the Word of God, must contain necessary Truth and somewhere there is a pure understanding to be found and cherished and promoted.
2. The Bible, if only a human document, may contain historical wisdom and ethical ideas, but cannot purport to be anything other than a competing philosophy in the marketplace of ideas. It stands or falls on a case by case application.
MY TASK is to lay out those two alternatives and require evidence to support all claims.
A TRUE Bible (Divinely Authored) would never fail any test and would stand up against all competing systems.
A corrupt human document BIBLE would break down historically, and logically in terms of internal consistency with reality, plus supernatural knowledge (data) would jump out of the text beyond Bronze Age wisdom.
All the above is sort of my road map toward a possibility of testing foundational arguments. An intellectually honest person would agree in advance to accept where the evidence landed regardless of one's prior position or belief.